Lilliopsida is a collection of fine jewelry crafted in my studio in Chicago, utilizing sterling silver and hairwork to create both absurd and sentimental heirlooms that celebrate you and the people you love.

I live with chronic pain and invisible illnesses that have made me come to terms with my own mortality in a way that lets me see the beauty in mundanity and absurdity. I grieve the lives I am unable to live, and that's hard to process sometimes. I mean, I still do stupid things, but maybe not as often as I crave.

Obviously, like any sane 20-something, I turned to history to see how people before me dealt with their grief and found the Victorians, who maybe grieved too much? They were a little crazy, but their extravagant show of emotion helped me find a middle ground between too little and too much. Along the way, I discovered Victorian hairwork and became entranced by the scarcity of information and artisans in this field today.

Hairwork (very crudely) is the art of making things out of hair for a wide variety of reasons. I practice the art of table braiding hair into cordage, as well as setting palette-worked hair (hair manipulated on a flat surface with stiffener) behind glass. I collaborate with Zen Hansen (@hairanthropology) to further my skills, teach hairworking techniques, gather information about historical hairworkers, and write books and patterns for contemporary hairworkers.

Shortly after my serious foray into hairwork, I realized I needed to know more about jewelry fabrication to answer questions I had about how some findings were made. I started taking classes at Lillstreet (and still do!) to learn the basics, with the hope of gaining enough skill to try and replicate antique pieces. Most pieces in the fine jewelry industry are made using CAD softwares, then 3D-printed, cast in metal, and hand finished. Old world jewelers didnt have computers (obvi) so relied on a vast number of tools and techniques still taught in academic (or adjacent) institutions.

So far, I've taken classes on metalsmithing, cloisonne, stone setting, hand forging, and experimental casting with more on the horizon.I look forward to furthering my skills, education, and creating whatever I want :)

I also sing, but shoot me an email if u wanna hear more about that.

Anyways!

-Lily